Various proposals are made for knitting knitwear on the flat knitting machine in a seamless manner, to eliminate or minimize the after-treatment effort after completion of the knitting. In general, when a sweater is knitted on the flat knitting machine, the front and back bodies are knitted in a tubular form to be continuously connected with each other at both ends thereof, while knitting from hems to shoulder. In parallel with this, right and left sleeves located at both lateral sides of the body are each knitted in a tubular form and joined to the tubular body, while they are shifted to the body. Then, after completion of the joining of the sleeves to the body, a neck is formed around a neckline opening in the body by rib knitting or the like knitting structure. Thereafter, the front body and the back body are joined together at the shoulder. This knitting method can eliminate or minimize the after-treatment effort after completion of the knitting.
The applicant of this application previously proposed in JP Laid-open (Unexamined) Patent Publication No. 2000-256946 a method of forming a neck around a neckline opening on the flat knitting machine as an example of the knitting methods that can eliminate or minimize the after-treatment effort after the completion of knitting. JP Laid-open (Unexamined) Patent Publication No. 2000-256946 discloses a knitting method using a flat knitting machine provided with needles, each comprising a needle body with a hook at a tip thereof and a slider with a tongue formed by combining two thin plates to hold a formed loop on the tongue of the slider, so as to perform the holding knitting, wherein a two-layer neck is knitted in a front body with successive needles, rather than with selected or dropped-off needles.
The application of the knitting method disclosed in JP Laid-open (Unexamined) Patent Publication No. 2000-256946 to the knitting of the front and back bodies being formed in a tubular knitted fabric requires the 1×3 knitting of forming loops with every three needles for knitting an overlapped-in-two-layer portion of the neck, or requires the flat knitting machine designed for the holding knitting technique to knit the overlapped-in-two-layer portion of the neck. When the 1×3 knitting is used, sinker loops and the needle loops are badly balanced and also the neck formed lacks of fullness and thus poorly shaped, resulting in reduction of the commercial value of the knitwear itself. Also, the holding knitting technique requires a specific flat knitting machine equipped with a special mechanism for it.
In the light of the problem above, the present invention has been made. It is an object of the present invention to provide a neck forming method that can knit a two-layer neck portion in knitwear as knitted in the form of a tubular fabric with its front and back knitted fabrics continuously connected with each other at both ends thereof, in such a manner as to eliminate the after-treatment effort, without using the 1×3 knitting that can produce the disadvantage that sinker loops and the needle loops are badly balanced and the neck lacks of fullness, as well as without proving the flat knitting machine with any special mechanism for the holding knitting technique.